...Either case, this little nook on blogasphere is the natural dumping ground for the sort of crap that eruptswhen you find a wee Chink in the Britworks...

But hey, I promise you this is steamingly hot shit...which is probably why it's all looking a bit brown!

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The Lava Trolley

24 December 2009

The Apocalypse Draws Nigh

"This is the story of how the belief that the world has to fight thethreat of global warming has crept to the top of the political agenda,to the point where, not just in Britain but across the world, governmentsare solemnly discussing by far the most costly series of measuresany bunch of politicians has proposed."

I would be far more concerned about running out of fuel, if I were they.

Temperatures on earth have been rising and falling over billions of years, and evidence that man's pre-dominantly responsible is far from conclusive (particularly since our existence only counts for a tiny fraction of the evolutionary timeline). However, the danger of exhausting current energy supply is beyond dispute, and more likely to affect us sooner than the need to seek inspiration from a certain biblical shipwright.

It's difficult to decide who to believe. One minute we're being told the climate is heating up, and the next, that it's actually getting cooler. One source claims it's to do with our wanton abuse of power, and another that climate change is caused by sunspot activity or planetary movements.

If scientists bicker amongst themselves as to the cause of these changes (or worse - whether any of these changes have even occurred), who are we to turn to for a decent explanation? Politicians seem to think they're the ones to lead us out of this crisis.

That alone triggers my bullshit radar and sets off all alarms at full blast.

Don't get me wrong, I am not completely pooh-poohing warmists. Despite the alarmist attitude, these people do have a point. We haven't got an infinite amount of resources, so keep on using them and what we have will gradually drain away. That's surely got to have some kind of impact on life around us. Assuming all emails were genuine, Climategate was a huge blow, not just to the global warming cause but to the whole environmental movement.

Eco-terrorists may not be trustworthy (or rational), yet the same could be said of sceptics who have their own selfish agenda. Both extremes are equally harmful, and when governmentsstart sticking their oars in, it's not just rising sea levels we have to worry about...it's the cost as well. All this money is patching up something alright, but it's not our ecosystem.

Not one to get hysterical about CO2 emissions, I am far less likely to feel any enthusiasm when politicians (and by extension, large corporations, including those that back research teams) get involved. All this makes the stench of exploitation difficult to ignore.

It's not a worldwide conspiracy as much as it is a spectacle of human nature and public gullibility. Greed can be a great motivator. So long as there are millions still to be made from oil, the powers-that-be are hardly going to put their heart and soul into finding us an alternative...Not immediately anyway. Regardless, they must be seen to be doing something right now, if only to shut everyone up.

Fuel conservation, hybrid inventions, recycling, population control etc - these measures do buy us more time. But whether in this lifetime or our descendants', that meter's bound to tick over with us humans finding ourselves the same place as the dinosaurs...So, no pressure then!

There has only ever been one answer; everything else is damage control, a means to delay the inevitable.

Unless we discover another planet to plunder, our continued survival depends very much on securing an energy supply that's renewable. Happily, the latter possibility isn't that far from fruition. We even have quite a few choices, from hydro-power to nuclear fusion. All that's required is further research and development, and someone with a bit of common sense to invest in it. Let's hope he's rich too.

Forget the doomsday scenarios you've been force-fed. If the world ends tomorrow, it'll more likely be due to the lack of anything meaningful on TV. What will the masses do now X Factor is over? And Big Brother soon to be history too. It's practically a double catastrophe!

The human race is not beyond overcoming the fuel crisis, nor is it likely to become extinct...well, not until the sun burns itself out billions of years later. But that's a different matter entirely. When that happens, we will be well and truly fucked.

2 Comments:

Great post. I especially liked the connection you drew between energy as our source of life in the sense that we depend on it. Very detailed information on our approaches to the carbon footprint. Indeed there are many things that could be done. It is a tricky balance between taxing our resources too much for the sake of business and comfort, and living in the stone age to preserve our environment.